Right on Friedman: who has the capabilities, expertise, and incentives to kill al-Hariri?

By: Bouthaina Shaabam

   22Feb. 2005

Upon hearing the terrifying explosion that claimed the life of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri on February 14^th, the Beirutese looked up at the sky searching for Israeli fighter planes that violate the Lebanese airspace almost daily. In the meantime the plotters of the assassination rushed to enforce its repercussions and  quickly pointed fingers at Syria.

Fixated in front of our TVs, we, Arabs, were horrified watching the scenes of smoke and fire, burnt bodies, and damaged buildings come back to the most beautiful of Arab capitals. We have become quite accustomed to watching such scenes every day in Iraqi cities under American occupation, in the Palestinian territories over a century now, and in Beirut itself during the civil war that the Syrian cooperation with the Lebanese national forces put an end to. Now the scenes are back due to new factors, most important of which is some international scheme that wants to implant divisiveness once again.

For the people of this region, the scenes of Lebanese divisiveness bring to mind the nightmares of massacres and assassinations among brothers. They bring the nightmare of foreign avarice that never stopped short, and will never stop short, of sowing the seeds of  turbulence and committing massacres. We should remember the massacres of Chatila, Qana, Jinin, Rafah, Fallujah, and the civilian and children victims of Ram Allah, Gaza, Jinin, Alramadi, Bakouba and others.

For Arabs, this atrocious murder looked like a shift planned and executed by the enemies of the nation, with utmost precision in identifying the target, the time and type of killing. A shift that was meant to transport instability and chaos from Palestine and Iraq to Lebanon and Syria. This brought to memory a series of assassinations committed by international intelligence agencies and their allies in the region to get rid of Arab leaders, especially Lebanese, and to reshuffle papers in the region. Those assassinations claimed the lives of leaders such as Rene Moawad, Abbas al-Mousawi, and a long list of others murdered at the hands of international apparatuses equipped with professional killers specialized in plotting and executing assassinations with careful preciseness that leaves no evidence behind. All in the service of certain regional and international interests.

Few hours after the event, the BBC TV said that “the type of the explosion and the substance used are highly advanced and advanced technologies were used.” In an announcement made by the European Peace Movement, who was holding a meeting in Berlin Tuesday morning 15 February attended by European generals and experts, the Movement found that the explosives used in the bombing that claimed the life of Hariri “are in direct connection with the disappearance of four thousand tons of strong explosives that disappeared from Iraq after the American occupation.” The movement at had reminded the media at the time that the US was silent about this suspicious disappearance and about the confirmed information regarding the handing over of the location to an Israeli force that accompanied the occupying American forces and that transferred the explosives to Israel.

Analysts confirm that the explosives used in the car bombing are only owned by international and regional parties that enjoy high capabilities and expertise in the field. Everyone knows which international parties have the planning capabilities to bring down democratic governments like those of President Musaddek and the Allindy government. We all know who masterminded and executed the assassinations of president Karami, Rene Mouawad, Abbas Mousawi and others in Lebanon. And we know which countries gave their intelligence apparatuses the authority to carry out assassinations, and which countries discuss and announce lists of assassination operations before their execution, and then carry them out in the cities of Palestine, and the streets of Beirut and Damascus under the sight of the whole world. We all know which countries can organize civil disturbance in Iran, Chile, Venezuela, and a long list of other countries where democracy was buried under tyrants appointed just because they were “friends.”

The main incentive behind the assassination is the strategic objective of continuous military presence in all the countries in the region. It has become clear to everyone today that the rationale behind the US expedition into Iraq is neither “freedom,” nor “Democracy,” nor even “weapons of mass destruction.” Certainly, the reason was neither the “Iraqi people,” out of whom more than a hundred thousand civilians have been killed to the moment in massacres in Falluja, Najaf, Samerra and other cities, as well as in the torture cellars of Abu Gharib and similar prisons whose names no longer anyone cares to mention. The real rational is building permanent military bases in Iraq and in other countries who are still out of the foreign bondage in the region. Since the beginning of the Iraq occupation, many such permanent bases have been built costing billions of dollars up till now. The objective is controlling the oil, the resources of the region and putting a limit to the freedom, independence and sovereignty that Arabs enjoyed in the second half of the twentieth century.

These bases need “secure” ports to receive their supplies and connect them with the mother bases in Europe. This is why pressure today is building up towards infiltrating Lebanon, and placing the country under enemy guardianship to secure the military ports and end resistance. In this context, the Syrian-Lebanese relationship stands as an obstacle to controlling Lebanon and spread military bases all over the world including the Arab region. The objective of this scheme is not preserving “freedom” as is claimed, or “democracy” or “sovereignty” in Lebanon, because the national opposition in Lebanon is part of the democratic political life that Syria helped in restoring to Lebanon. The objective is to violate the freedom, independence, sovereignty and unity of Lebanon, secure its ports and put them to the service of the strategic military existence in the region.

The strange thing is that Friedman (in his article "Hama Rules" in The New York Times, February 17^th, 2005) as well as some members of the Congress and some journalists and western politicians give the impression that they are  busy defending “freedom” in certain countries, the very same countries which they have occupied, or which they want to occupy. In the meantime, they ignore real issues of freedom such as that of the Palestinian people who have been fighting for a century for freedom and independence from the same brutal occupation those freedom protagonists support with money, weapons and protection.

If Friedman and his like are so keen on Arab freedom, then why didn’t he write one article about the Iraqi scientists and academics who were assassinated by the same forces that adopt assassination as a plan to change the face of the region and bring its defeat? Why did he not mourn for Babel, the city that constitutes an important part of Iraq’s identity and cultural heritage? If media is free in the United States, then how could journalists be recruited to voice out the will of their Administration and its plans in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria today?

The assassination of the martyr al-Hriri is a launching signal for the foreign scheme to take over Lebanon made clear by the escalation against Syria. Those who plotted and executed the assassination with such precision have also planned its consequences that target first of all the security and stability of Lebanon and the Syria-Lebanese relationship. If uncovering the murderer is done through uncovering the beneficiaries from the murder, then the parties who benefit most are those very same parties who benefited from the occupation of Palestine and Iraq, destabilizing Lebanon, targeting Syria and severing the close ties that bind the Syrian and Lebanese people together. The martyr Hariri was aware of these schemes and he stood against them. Eliminating him in that criminal manner from the Lebanese equation paves the way for international and regional forces, well known to all in terms of capabilities, expertise and incentives, to implement the scheme of taking over the Middle East, ignoring the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people draining the region’s resources, and violating Arab freedom, independence and sovereignty. This is through preparing the circumstances for occupation, building military bases and ports, this time in the name of “democracy” and “freedom,” unlike in the past when they were done under the name of combating communism one time, terrorism another, and any other name. It is very strange that Thomas Friedman does not mention Falluja and May Lay and Abu Gharib. It is also very strange that he forgets Musaddek, Allindy, Rene Moawad, and many other leaders, as well as the massacres and the incidents that clarify to him who has the capabilities and the expertise and the incentives to murder the martyr al-Hariri.